You are here

Administrator's blog

This Saturday, December 13th the Virginia Holocaust Museum will be hosting guest speaker Sam Mihara. Sam is a second generation Japanese American, who at nine years old was forced with his family to move into Heart Mountain, an internment camp in northern Wyoming, after the United States entered World War II. Sam will be sharing his experience at Heart Mountain as well as the immediate and lasting impact that intolerance and discrimination had on his life.

In 2007, the Virginia Holocaust Museum began the long process of digitizing our oral history collection. This group of personal life stories is part of the foundation of doing research at the VHM and provides invaluable first person accounts of the horrific impact of the Holocaust.

On Saturday, October 18th the VHM participated in the 7th annual HandsOn Day hosted by HandsOn Greater Richmond. This year saw the largest turnout to date for HandsOn Day: over 1,200 volunteers and 60 different projects to volunteer for. For our service project, we collaborated with The Daffodil Project to create a new garden area on the left side of the floodwall facing Dock Street.

On October 9, the Museum held its 2nd annual Educator Open House. There were thirty-five teachers in attendance coming from all over the state of Virginia. Richmond, Henrico, Hanover and Chesterfield schools were represented. Other districts in attendance included, Prince George, Dinwiddie, Essex, Middlesex, Nottoway, Virginia Beach and Augusta County Public Schools. For some teachers in attendance it was there very first visit to the Museum. The purpose of the open house is to bring teachers to the Museum to learn about the educational programming and resources that are offered.

When you plan a visit to a museum, historical site, or park, often it is to see a collection of art or sculpture, to look at surviving artifacts, and generally to learn more. One of the often overlooked pillars of any nonprofit are the people who support and share the organization’s mission and goals; whether it is through volunteering, financial giving, or a combination of both. While the employees share a passion for the organization, the simple answer is that without community involvement, the nonprofit would not exist.

The Society of American Archivists (SAA) held its annual conference in Washington, DC this year. These conferences offer a chance to hear about new technology and techniques in the field and interact with others who might be dealing with the same problems.

If you have visited the Virginia Holocaust Museum over the past six months, you will have seen changes occurring everywhere. New walls being built, old ones being knocked down and most importantly the updates in our permanent exhibitions. However, if you have visited within the last few weeks you will have seen some of these changes in action. The front desk and reception area of the museum is currently under construction. This has always been and area of discussion, and plans to renovate it have been on the books for over a year. This summer we are finally able to make it happen!

As a 2014 Summer Intern, my role at the museum has been to design future exhibits and to update existing exhibits. This involves choosing photos and creating illustrations to use in panels, constructing installations, and rearranging displays. When I arrived at the museum in June, I focused on concentration camps. During the month of July, I planned exhibits for ghettos and the T4 Euthanasia Program. My most recent project was updating the storefront in the Kristallnacht exhibit and hanging an art show.

On Tuesday, August 12, 2014, I spoke to the Holicky – Sitter US Marine Corps Veterans Group of Richmond. The topic I addressed for the Marine Corps veterans was the work and mission of the Virginia Holocaust Museum, and the critical role the Museum will play in transforming memories of the Holocaust into the history of the Holocaust as it will be known and remembered through the coming generations.

The Virginia Holocaust Museum is proud to announce the opening of Perpetrators, a traveling exhibition from the Florida Holocaust Museum. Forty original prints by artist Sid Chafetz depict the involvement of those who implemented and executed the Nazi's heinous schemes. The artist urges the audience to acknowledge the boundaries of individual responsibility and personal accountability.

This Saturday August 9th, the Museum will be hosting a screening of the documentary film, The Real Inglorious Bastards. The film recounts the experiences of three daring men who were trained by the U.S. Government’s Office of Strategic Services to carry out an undercover mission in Europe during World War II; this mission became known as "Operation Greenup."

Artifacts are the heart of any museum. Without artifacts, we would have a difficult time telling the story of the Holocaust. With this in mind, collections care and preservation are essential functions of the museum and its staff. It is our hope that our collection will survive to tell the story of the Holocaust for generations to come.